Victims in Boston Face a Difficult Path to Recovery

Ryan McMahon, 33, fractured her back and broke both wrists in the panicked moments after the Boston Marathon bombings.Credit
Katherine Taylor for The New York Times

Almost two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombings, which killed three and injured more than 260, the medical toll is becoming clearer, with many of the victims suffering complex wounds that are causing intense pain and that will require several more operations.

Thirty-one victims remained hospitalized at the city’s trauma centers on Thursday, including some who lost legs or feet. Sixteen people had limbs blown off in the blasts or amputated afterward, ranging in age from 7 to 71. But in a way, their cases are the simpler ones, said Dr. David King, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital.

For some whose limbs were preserved, Dr. King said, the wounds were so littered with debris that five or six operations have been needed to decontaminate them.

“The idea is to spread out the physiological stress over multiple operations,” he said.

Some of the wounded also still need surgery to repair bones, veins and nerves. Many will need physical therapy as well. About 10 patients have already arrived at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, said Timothy Sullivan, a spokesman, and that number could soon double.

For many of the wounded, managing pain is a constant challenge. Dr. Alok Gupta, a trauma surgeon at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said the hospital was giving patients oral and intravenous narcotics and, where possible, regional nerve blocks using catheters.

Dr. King said that for those who lost limbs, so-called phantom pain — which feels as if it is coming from the body part that is no longer there — can be excruciating and particularly hard to treat.

“You have to balance between taking the pain away,” he said, “and them being interactive and able to participate in their own rehabilitation.”

The ailments are not just physical. Some patients are upbeat, doctors said, but others are angry, anxious and depressed.

Joan Smith, the manager of social work services at Tufts Medical Center, said that virtually all of the 14 victims who came through the hospital were experiencing acute stress disorder.

“I also personally did a lot of work with family members who were trying to be strong for their children but at the same time were falling apart behind closed doors,” said Ms. Smith, who made sure all the patients and their families had a list of mental health specialists to contact if they felt the need.

Dr. Scott Ryan, chief of orthopedic trauma at Tufts, said he could not stop thinking about how traumatic it must have been for the victims, most of whom remained conscious after the blasts, to see the extent of their wounds as they were raced to hospitals.

“The most disturbing thing for me in treating these patients is that they were awake after it happened and looked down and saw these terrible wounds,” he said. “Most of the time, patients with that bad injuries, they’re from a car accident or motorcycle accident and by the time they get to hospital they’re not with it enough to look down and say, ‘Oh my God, look what happened to my leg.’ ”

Those still hospitalized include Heather Abbott, 38, whose left foot, mangled in the first blast, was initially saved by doctors at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She chose to have her leg amputated a few inches below the knee this week, after doctors essentially told her that life would be harder with the foot than without it.

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“I walked maybe 10 feet today on a walker and everybody was so proud of me,” Ms. Abbott, a human resources manager from Newport, R.I., told reporters at the hospital on Thursday. “And I thought, ‘Oh gosh, this is going to be a long time.’ ”

Fund-raising Web pages for some victims describe their physical and emotional ordeals in raw detail. A page for Christian Williams, 41, an art director whose legs were gravely injured as he stood near the marathon finish line, included a note from Mr. Williams in which he described how he felt after his fourth operation on Monday. Although the doctors “managed to get my right leg closer to being closed,” he wrote, “the meds weren’t working and I couldn’t hide from the pain.”

A video posted on a fund-raising page for Celeste Corcoran, 47, who lost both legs below her knees, shows her meeting with Sgt. Gabe Martinez, a Marine who lost his lower legs and came to give her a pep talk. “I can’t do anything right now,” Ms. Corcoran told him tearfully.

Sergeant Martinez, who walked into her room at Boston Medical Center on prosthetic legs, replied: “Right now, yes. But I’m telling you with all my heart, you are going to be more independent than you ever were.”

At Spaulding, the rehab hospital, a team of doctors, nurses, psychologists and physical therapists will focus exclusively on the bombing victims, many of whom will be fitted with prosthetic legs while they are there. Inpatient rehabilitation usually lasts a few weeks, said Dr. Ross Zafonte, Spaulding’s chief medical officer, although some of these patients will be there longer. Months of outpatient rehabilitation will follow, he said.

“They’re learning to walk with a prosthetic, regain balance, take care of that extremity, perform their own activities of daily living,” Dr. Zafonte said. “They have to deal with all of those rather life-changing issues rather quickly.”

Ryan McMahon, 33, who fractured her back and broke both wrists when she fell off the stands at the finish line in the panicked moments after the explosions, is starting her long recovery at her grandmother’s home in Newton, Mass. Sitting straight up on her grandmother’s couch on Thursday afternoon, her back supported by a brace and one arm by a pile of pillows, Ms. McMahon said she was struggling with some anxiety.

“I was really nervous transitioning into coming home — feeling like this was a safe environment, but looking around feeling like it was a different place again,” said Ms. McMahon, who has an appointment to see a mental health counselor on Friday.

Her father, John McMahon, said it would take her about a year to recover fully. Ms. McMahon, who was hospitalized for a week, was not buying it.

“It’s not going to be a big deal,” she said. “It’s not. I’m going to be fine.”

Ms. McMahon had run to Boston Medical Center after the bombings, and was one of the first patients to arrive there.

“I just saw everyone coming in, and that was really hard,” she said, adding that the sight of other patients arriving covered with blood and without limbs has been much more difficult to process than her own injuries. “Every once in a while, I just kind of break down and think about the whole big picture of it, just focusing on other people.”

Correction: May 1, 2013

An article on Friday about the difficult path to recovery for those injured in the Boston bombings misidentified the illness experienced by virtually all of the 14 victims who came through Tufts Medical Center. It is acute stress disorder, not post-traumatic stress disorder. (In PTSD, the symptoms have to be present for at least a month.)

A version of this article appears in print on April 26, 2013, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Boston Victims Face Long Path To a Recovery. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe